September 27, 2008

We had an amazing turn-out for this weekend's tournament; 11 players total. That is really sweet as far as I'm concerned...since the only time we've ever broken that number was for our DC Legends release celebration back in December!

Since I put a 30 minute time limit into place a little while back we've be able to play tournaments with four rounds rather than our previous three. I think this is more fun and certainly gives the players a chance to see more of the decks the other bring in.

For some reason the first match of my four has totally evaporated from my memory, beyond the fact that my search-less Darkseid's Elite won out in turn six. The second and third matches were up against Heralds of Galactus and Avengers respectively. The Heralds player was new to the game and had a terrible draw. Overall I'd say that he only pulled four or five plot twists through the entire 8 rounds we played; and the Avengers just didn't have the oomph to survive all the burn effects I was able to get set up with.

The final round for me went far, far worse. Statistically speaking I suppose it had to happen eventually, which it finally did in spectacular fashion. I was unable to draw any of my locations or ongoing plot-twists, barring two copies of Ancient Evils and an early Have a Blast. Roy's deck was a Secret Society deck running Dr. Polaris, Dr. Sivana, Cheetah, Poison Ivy, Charaxes, Black Mantis etc. The true "you're f-ing kidding me" combo was Messiah Complex retrieving Death and/or The Beyonder three times in the game...essentially making me fight against an opponent with an endurance total of 80! By the time you add in the free recruits from Poison Ivy and Charaxes it was pretty ridiculous. I lost on turn 7 with Roy sitting at a hefty 30.

Roy was our big winner, taking home the top prize of Ultimates Thor and a spiffy play mat. Congratulations! Brian and Scott rounded out our top-three.

The next event format will be Clone Saga: For this you may choose one character to make non-unique in your deck. Multiple copies of the same card cannot be recruited, but different versions and / or costs of that character can. For example: If I already have a copy of 2-drop Captain America, Secret Avenger in play, I can't recruit another one. I could however recruit any other Captain America card. It should prove to be a lot of fun.

September 26, 2008

I've been meaning to make a Darkseid deck for quite some time now, and finally did so about a week ago. I've been able to play 4 or 5 games with it and am very happy with how well it's been performing. The first game was a three player game and Kanto was a serious threat for both of my opponents to face. I was able to use his power twice; once to remove a 7-drop Defenders Hulk, and the second time to remove an Iron Man equipped with four pieces of extremely nasty equipment! There was a lot of swearing in that game... :)

Darkseid has also had success against an X-Men build running Sage and Bad Press (thank god for resource row manipulation!), Gotham Knights and a Secret Society team up. There are a few cards I'd like to switch in, but I need to hop online to buy them. I'll post a deck list up after tomorrow's "Luck of the Draw" tournament. I think that my next project after this one will be something involving the League of Assassins.

Oh and in other news: I recently heard that another venue in town will be running bi-weekly Vs. events soon. When I find of the time and date that they'll be starting those I'll be sure to post them up for everyone to see.

September 16, 2008

Another fine tournament event has come and gone. Last Friday we held our City Championship event. We had an 8-player pool with a diverse field as usual. I played my Fearsome Five / Infinity Gauntlet deck through four rounds. In the first round I was up against a Thunderbolts deck piloted by newcomer Dan. I was able to hit every drop as planned and draw into a fistful of gems. By turn six I had Thanos on the board against his 5 and 6 cost characters. Dropping a Power Gem and a copy of Armageddon on the table ended the turn, and the game, in my favor.

Round two saw me up against an Insanity deck. Ben hit his one-drop Ratcatcher and caused me a few rounds of grief by burning me for all the stuns I was causing. By turn four I was able to get my team-up out and the New Baxter Builder and Moondragon combo running. I had to go to turn seven this time, but Thanos, a Power Gem and a copy of Armageddon cemented the win.

Round three is where it started to go downhill for me. The first few turns against Scott's rallying Avengers were pretty evenly matched, but I was unable to get my team up going, or search for my 4 or 5 round characters. I was able to bring out Thanos for turn six and very nearly put the game away, but just couldn't pull it off. When I drew my cards for turn seven and had no characters to recruit...I knew it wasn't my game. Thanos was staring at a full board of Avengers 4-cost up. I had to admit defeat.

Usually we only play three rounds, but all the players agreed to run one final round, and the clock agreed that we had time. The final round put me up against Brian's Revenge Squad deck. He had an Anti-Matter Kiman in there and was able to get a ton of out of combat stuns. Add that into the fact that I suffered an awful draw all game (I only hit on turn three and four), and was never able to search for a needed character...I was done.

When the dust cleared after four rounds of play we had one undefeated player among the group: Scott Mooney! He walked away with a pile of Ultimates rare cards and the Iron Man t-shirt. Congratulations Scott.

September 05, 2008

I had been having a lot of trouble coming up with something new after building my not-yet-complete Green Lantern deck. I tried putting together a build of Manhunters, but it seemed to fall a little flat. They just don't have the support cards that Sentinels seem to enjoy. I have been able to get it to run well a few times, but I need a lot more than my 6 copies of Manhunter Soldier to make it run better. I do rather enjoy dropping Cyborg Superman on turn 5 though. I was able to do that against a Negative Zone deck and remove ALL the copies of Negative Zone from my opponent's deck, which made me laugh in a most sinister fashion.

For our switch-deck event last weekend I didn't have time to build something new, so I grabbed something at random out of my rather large demo deck pile. I ended up with Revenge Squad. It didn't do very well against a lot of the others, but I was told that if you could hit the curve it was actually fun to play so I took a closer look at it for myself.

While I'm sure this isn't anything original I decided to beef it up with some more fire power and ongoing plot twists in an attempt to make it more playable. Here's what I have come up with on a first past.

This is by no means a final list, but it's a starting place to build on. The premise is simple, but tough to pull off. This deck wants even initiative. Essentially I want to get Underground Movement (which I'd love to have 4 copies of) out by turn 3, then recruit Silver Banshee and move her into my hidden area. Then you want to get Lex Luthor, Power Armor out on turn 6.

Hopefully you have some plot twists in your resource row or a copy of Grudge Match to ensure that he can do some breakthrough. If you succeed there and can remove your opponent's ability to recruit their 7-drop you're in good shape to win the game. If you think it will go to turn 8 then you can move Lex into the hidden area to protect him and hopefully get his effect off again on turn 7. Doomsday should finish things on turn 8.

The deck isn't meant to be a smash-your-opponent-and-make-them-cry sort of thing. It's more of a fun deck with the villains doing nasty things to them, but without being too dirty or janky. I don't really like decks that aren't fun for my opponent to play against. When you are completely locked out of everything it's more frustrating than anything else. Feel free to post up some suggestions to make my deck better though!

September 02, 2008

Our switch team tournament went off spectacularly! I was really excited to see eight players show up with eight completely different decks. The format was embraced by all the attendees and was claimed to be good fun by everyone. And for me, that's what playing Vs System is all about.

Rather than go into detail I'll just give a brief run down of the decks and the winners. As usual, this is from memory, so I may make a few mistakes, but I'll do my best to overcome my middle-age memory gaps! Our pool of submitted decks consisted of Warbound, Thunderbolts, Brotherhood, Crime Lords / Avengers, Gotham Knights, Avengers / Thunderbolts, Revenge Squad and on other deck that currently slips my memory. I want to say Shadowpact, but that just doesn't sound right.

So the way the switch deck tourney works is that each player submits a deck to the pool. Each round, the players are given a random deck from the pool. They cannot pilot their own deck, or one that they have already used. At the end of three rounds of play the player with the best record is chosen, as is the most-winning deck. The creators of those decks play them against each other determine the final winner of the tournament.

We had one undefeated player: Roy, and one undefeated deck, created by Scott. They had brought in Warbound and Thunderbolts respectively, so that was what the final matchup was. The game went down to the wire with Hulk, Worldbreaker facing down a board of huge Thunderbolts...including a pumped up Radioactive Man who effectively stopped Roy from playing any plot twists to save himself from the stun and following face-smashing. In short, the winner of our first switch-deck tournament was Scott! Congratulations. :)